Outdoor Pan Tilt Zoom Cameras

IMPORTANT - When buying a Motorized Zoom Lens, you need to understand only one issue!

A lens advertised at 10X, 120X, or even 230X zoom does NOT matter! All that matters is the Optical (mm) zoom of the lens. No folks, even the Digital zoom ratio hardly matters.

Example: We have an expensive and inexpensive zoom lens. Both advertised at only 10X zoom. The expensive one is a 8-80mm 10X zoom (8mm x 10X zoom = 80mm). The inexpensive one is 3-30mm 10X zoom (3mm x 10X zoom = 30mm). See the problem? The 8-80 can see 2 1/2x farther than the 3-30mm, yet both are a 10X zoom! Further - what if the 8-80 was merely changed and manufactured as a 3-80mm? Note the rating changes from a 10X to 26X zoom, yet sees no farther than before! Folks, Dealers capitalize on buyer misconceptions such as this!

What about 120 or 230X zoom lenses? This advertising furthers confusion. Let's say we have a camera advertised at 230X (folks, we sell this type, so we're certainly not trying to mislead). It achieves this rating in a manner similar to this: we have a 3.6mm-85mm optical (multiply 3.6, 23x = 85mm) and then add a 10X Digital. Thus, 23X optical x 10X Digital = 230 Zoom. Sounds great! Right? Well once you've zoomed in as far you can go (reached the max optical zoom of 85mm), the Digital zoom kicks in and in a nut shell, Digital zoom is poor quality. The reason? All digital zooms take the max optical zooms existing pixels and merely blow them up! This pixel enlargement can be done anywhere from 1 to 10 times. The result? An extremely pixilated image!

Bottom line: All that really matters is the Optical zoom because it's the clearest imaging you'll receive.